The Road To Oblivion
by psquare
Summary: .:Oneshot:. Embrace the pain, Solo said. Make it your greatest strength. I didn’t understand… couldn’t understand… for on my deathbed I realise that everything had been nothing, but a lone road to oblivion.


**_A/N:_** A few words from me before you proceed…

This is set in _Traitor_, during the period in which Jacen stayed in the Nursery, forging a partnership with his dhuryam. It is told from the point of view of one of the slaves in Jacen's domain, being treated by him.

I would also like to say that this is my first NJO fanfiction, so all and any comments are welcome. Do read, enjoy and review!

_**The Road to Oblivion**_

War was a strange thing.

It was not like I hadn't lived through a war before- lived through countless, in fact- but that's all I had done, and all that's been done to me. Lived through. Never had any battle touched me personally, or thousands of others like me, who were safe in their little cosy homes within the bowels of Coruscant. We had the Holonet- we heard, we watched, we cried, we despaired- but now, in the throes of pain, as I think about it, all that seemed like as if we were fulfilling an obligation- like the few words of sympathy and clicks of the tongue we offer at the funeral of a relative we never really cared about much, anyway.

But when the Yuuzhan Vong invaded and ravaged Coruscant- our very homes and hearths, I tasted my first bitter taste of the true trials of citizenry caught in the middle of a war. In the tumultuous evacuation, I hadn't known where my family had gone, who was who, or even where I was- I was just swept away by a screaming, panicked human flood… and before I knew it, I was grabbed roughly by a pair of armoured arms, a gnullith was slammed up my nostrils, and I was thrown into some kind of liquid, warm vat with hundreds of others, losing consciousness along the way…

…only to wake up to pain like I'd never experienced before. I had screamed and I had kicked and struggled as the Yuuzhan Vong Shaper had made his insertion of the slave seed into my body, with no particular efficiency or gentleness. A couple of snarling Warriors had restrained me as did hundreds more warriors to thousand more slaves.

After that, my life had been just a blur of agony and madness.

The horrors the dhuryams made us slaves do in the 'Nursery'… and the horrible pain we experienced if we didn't. The dhuryam didn't care if we died; it _had_ to make us 'work' near the amphistaff grove. It didn't care if we were too exhausted to even move; it would scorch our nerves with pain from the slave seed to make us work again. Only recently had it started being conceding in the case of injury or sickness, like the one I was in now. We all, the slaves and the dhuryam, looked to one man when it happened.

Jacen Solo, the Slave Healer.

He was… was _strange_, strangeness in a way not even the most hostile and isolated species of aliens could representate successfully. For one, he seemed to be the only one able to resist the pain inflicted by the dhuryam through the slave seed, and act independently to a certain extent- even become… I don't know how to say this… _friends_ with the dhuryam! He was a Jedi, granted, but him being this effective against a vile Yuuzhan Vong creation… it was unheard of.

What was even more surprising is that he took advantage of this relative independence to attend to the injuries of his fellow slaves. It stopped at healing, though; talking to him, getting anything out of him, was like trying to squeeze water out of a sun-baked Tatooine rock. We were irritated at him, sometimes, when the pain did not occupy all of our senses; sometimes we were grateful.

Sometimes, we were _afraid _of him.

I lifted my head slightly from the moss I was presently lying on, stifling a moan as I watched Jacen Solo and the strange little avian creature talk intensely about something. She would come here often and talk to the young man- each conversation had him look sullen and troubled, while she would have on her unfathomable face an expression that could be approximated, by human terms, as one of satisfaction and serenity.

Finally it ended, and the alien skipped off, while the Jedi stood up slowly, on his face that usual troubled, contemplative look. He seemed to come back to his senses soon enough, maybe due to a not-so-subtle spur from the dhuryam, and set about attending to the injured slaves lying on soft mosses scattered across the makeshift hospital.

I sighed and turned slightly, gently touching the bloody bandage covering the bloated lips of the deep gash inflicted by a wild amphistaff a couple of Nursery days ago. Despite Jacen's best efforts, infection had slowly settled in, and was eating away at me. It was no secret that I would die soon- the fever that boiled me alive, the jolts of pain from every part of my body, that ultimate _tiredness_ that had seeped like a plague into my limbs were constant reminders of that fact.

Death smirked at me from beyond the corner.

Not that I had anything against dying; it was a welcome fate, in fact, compared to the agony I was suffering as a slave in the Nursery. It would be my ultimate destiny anyway, whether the Yuuzhan Vong had attacked the galaxy or not. But still, I felt deep regret- regret like such only normal people could feel…

We had never asked for any war; nor did we want to be captured and die heroic deaths. We had only wanted life to go on as it always had- deliberately moving out of routine was for people like the Jedi, not us. And yet, it is the common people who are thrown into danger, poverty, misery, suffering… and it is eventually we who have the greatest regrets. Even after this war is over- things can _never_ be the same. Never. The leaders may assume the galaxy is in order, is 'in peace', but it is not. The scars can never fade for the common man…

The pain of separation during the war- particularly Coruscant's conquest- was almost comparable to the slave seed pain. I didn't know what had happened to my family and friends… they could be dead, or in predicaments even worse.

An electrical tingle of pain scorched my nerves suddenly, bringing me out of my despondent contemplation and making me gasp. It was almost here.

Jacen Solo approached me then, kneeling down next to me and reaching for the bandage. "How do you feel now?" he asked.

I looked at him in disbelief. He was a Jedi; couldn't he _tell_ immediately that I was dying? "N-not good," I managed.

"I see," he murmured, inspecting the purplish edges of the now-exposed, long wound. He tore off a new strip from the edge of his robe skin, smeared it with the paste of some medicinal herbs he'd found around the Nursery domain, and set about tying it up again, with an efficiency that had astounded me before. He looked at me straight in the eye, his deep brown eyes intense. "You don't have much time, I'm afraid."

I lay back with a sigh. He _had _known after all… "I can feel that," I answered. "I know I'm going to die soon, and…"

A slight twinkle entered his eyes. "Of course I was not talking about that. The dhuryam doesn't allow its slaves much time here, so you'd better recover soon." He finished tying up the bandage with a tight knot.

I groaned. _Why doesn't he understand…_ "The pain is unbearable," I said desperately. "I _know_ that soon I will face my morbid destiny…"

"Pain doesn't mean you're going to die," he said simply. "In fact, to live is to feel pain." He smiled at me, the smile being sad and wistful all at once. "You just have to accept it that way."

_To accept pain…_ I didn't understand. How was that even possible? It went against the very laws of nature- how can anyone _ignore_ pain scorching the nerves, let alone accept it?

Jacen, obviously recognising the look of bewilderment in my eyes, started speaking again. "Too long has everybody been looking at one only side of the picture- pain is much more than your body's torturous response to injury; it is also the factor that contributes best toward strengthening your mind."

He folded his legs underneath him and looked to the misty, fake horizon. The sun should be on soon… "Think about it. You have to face pain in some form or the other, for the successful completion of your ambitions. Sometimes, it's the only bridge to get to wherever you want to go."

My mind worked furiously at his words, and yet, I couldn't perceive any _sense_ in them. Nobody had to face pain like this to achieve their ambition… or maybe I was missing something here. Another spasm of pain shook me then, and I gave up. What was the use of telling a dying man all this… this _drivel_?

But then again, whether I was dying or not, I would never have understood it.

I was a normal citizen- not even that prominent among Coruscant's downlevels. What he had said was beyond my understanding and perception… I was not a Jedi.

My breathing grew more ragged, and the fever boiled even higher, though I could feel a cold seeping into my limbs, travelling to crust my heart.

Jacen raised his eyebrows, and in his eyes shone infinite sadness- he was surrounded by death everyday, but each one of them caused him some sort of sadness. He had finally realised that it was all over for me.

For me, for people like me, it was just a lone road to oblivion.

Jacen reached out and his calloused hand gently brought down my eyelids over my eyes. I smiled slightly, as my rate of breathing reached an inhuman crescendo, before slowing down altogether. Perhaps I would see my family at the end of the road, after all…

Infinite blackness abruptly cut off my thoughts, leaving one lingering to echo within my lifeless mind:

I had finally reached my destination.

* * *


End file.
